


wrapped up in burning skies

by finkpishnets (orphan_account)



Category: X Factor RPF
Genre: M/M, Other, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-21
Updated: 2011-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-28 13:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/finkpishnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She smells like motor oil and dusk and when she appears it’s with a roar, the wheels of her bike skidding on dust and spinning the world on its axis.</i> Post-apocalyptic AU based off of MCR's Killjoys videos/Rihanna’s <i>Only Girl in the World</i> video.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrapped up in burning skies

**Author's Note:**

> For the 10_dates prompt: sex.

She smells like motor oil and dusk and when she appears it’s with a roar, the wheels of her bike skidding on dust and spinning the world on its axis. It’s always like this – sudden and exciting – and Aiden watches her climb off her bike, long, bare legs sliding across metal, and feels Matt’s smile more than he sees it.

“You’re late,” Matt says, and she quirks an eyebrow, red ( _red_ ) hair bright under the sun.

“No I’m not,” Rihanna says, and she’s right of course; she appears as she chooses or not at all and Matt knows that better than anyone. “Well boys,” she says, “aren’t you going to invite a girl inside?”

Aiden steps away from the door and she smiles as she brushes past him, the smile that has men crumbling beneath her heel and makes memories flash behind his eyelids.

It’s only slightly cooler in the shade, dust drawing patterns in the air as they push open the door; Rihanna walks to the corner and grabs the half-empty whisky bottle, gulping it down like it’s water, and Aiden can’t take his eyes off of the shape her mouth makes around the rim, careful and calculated.

“So,” she says, running delicate fingers across her lips, “how have you been?”

Matt huffs out a laugh, arms crossed over his chest as he leans casually against the wall, and Aiden’s reminded again that he’s the odd one out here; Matt and Rihanna have known each other for a long time – “ _sometimes it feels like forever, sometimes I wonder if I made her up_ ” – and the first time she’d turned up, a rip in her skirt and blood beneath her fingernails, she’d tilted her head and looked at Aiden like he was an intruder.

Three years later it still feels like nothing’s changed.

“We’re alive,” Matt says with a shrug, and Rihanna smiles.

“I can see.”

They don’t say anything else; now’s not the time for talking. Later, when Aiden’s tipping into sleep, the two of them will slip outside and whisper about things he isn’t privy to; he’s never sure if they’re protecting him or if they just don’t think he’s old enough to understand, and every time he promises himself he’s going to bring it up to Matt when she’s gone, ask him why, ask him to stop, but every time he chickens out.

Matt loves him but Aiden doesn’t think that’s enough to actually stop him leaving, in the end.

Rihanna kisses Matt first, as always, and Aiden watches them with less detachment then he’d like. She runs her fingers through Matt’s hair, arching her body into his, and she’s taller than him in her boots; Aiden wonders, briefly ( _bitterly_ ), if the height difference might be one of Matt’s kinks, if that’s part of what drew him to Aiden when he was nothing more than a scared kid with nowhere left to run.

When she turns and reaches for him, Aiden goes without question because he might hate her when he lets his thoughts drift that far but he still wants her. He thinks maybe that’s their curse.

Her kisses burn, a fiery pressure that reminds him he’s alive, here and now, and the world might be falling to shit outside their door but their hearts are still beating; when he walks her back towards the mattress in the corner of the room, she presses a smile against his lips that’s all challenge, one she knows he’ll always accept, and he thinks maybe she hates him a little bit too.

Matt’s hands are on his back, his neck, a familiar anchor, and Aiden sighs and reaches out for him, pulling him closer because he’s Aiden’s reason for being here, no matter how much Rihanna’s skin might set his own on fire. The body heat is stifling, too many legs tangled together, and they’re sweat-slick and flushed by the time their clothes have been thrown to the side, a mass of fabric over dusty floorboards that they have no way of cleaning.

There are sharp nails grazing his chest and calloused fingers tugging at his hair, Matt’s lips pressing open kisses against his neck as Rihanna draws shapes down Matt’s thighs with her tongue, and everything’s too much, enough to have the world spinning on its axis.

Maybe that’s why they do it, to remember the world’s spinning at all.

He doesn’t know where one of them ends and the other begins; it’s all _touch_ and _heat_ and _pleasepleaseplease_ , and it feels like it lasts forever, like maybe the rest of the world has dropped away and it’s just the three of them caught up in never-ending sensation. Aiden falls over the edge like he’s falling over a cliff, the initial moment of peace that stretches out in front of him before he’s tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, and it takes his breath away ( _it always does_ ).

Afterwards they move apart, just enough so the heat is no longer unbearable, and gulp down heavy air until their lungs feel less stretched and tender. Aiden tries to keep his eyes open, doesn’t want them to use his lethargy as an excuse to shut him out, but he’s always drowsy after sex and Matt knows that, knows it won’t be long until sleep wins out and he and Rihanna can speak privately.

Aiden hears them go, dreams that won’t be pleasant ( _never are_ ) dragging him under, and he wishes he didn’t love Matt so fucking much because now his heart’s in someone else’s hands and Matt’s never been the most careful of people.

He wakes up to the sound of engines, the skid of wheels, and breathes.

“Hi,” Matt says when he comes back in, the oil smudged across his cheek Rihanna’s leaving shot, and Aiden feels tired suddenly, old in a way he has no right to be.

“Hi,” he says, and doesn’t ask Matt what they talked about.

“You okay?” Matt asks, and Aiden frowns because that’s not how this conversation goes. There’s never a conversation in the first place.

“Yes,” he says, then: “no.”

Matt bites at his lip and runs a hand across the back of his neck awkwardly, and this is Aiden’s Matt, the one who knows how to fire a pistol blindfolded and wire up a Trans-Am and play long-forgotten tunes on a battered guitar they picked up somewhere along the road. This is the Matt who found a lost boy swallowed in dust and put him back together again with lazy smiles and soft hands.

“I love you,” Matt says after a while, and Aiden nods. He’s never doubted it, not for a second, though neither of them are naïve enough to believe that love is any safer than life.

“We have to get moving,” Matt says with a sigh, and Aiden frowns. “Rihanna says bad things are on the way.”

Aiden wants to ask if that’s a coincidence or if they’ve just been led here but he can’t work up the courage, and besides, it wouldn’t do them any good to dwell on something that’s already done.

“Okay,” he says instead, and Matt offers him a small, sad smile like maybe he can hear everything Aiden isn’t saying anyway.

“It won’t always be like this,” Matt says, lying down and pulling him close, and Aiden doesn’t know if he means Rihanna or life in general, but the words ring false regardless.

“Sure,” he says, staring up at the shards of light spilling through the cracks in the ceiling boards.

Tomorrow they’ll leave, travel across the sand and repeat it all again, and they’ll hold each other up because – scarce, shattering visits aside – they’re all they’ve got, and sometimes that feels like enough and sometimes it feels like the end of the world’s a lot closer than nameless faces in a sea of masks, but it’s what they’re fighting for so they won’t stop.

Today Aiden’s fingers curl against Matt’s skin and he thinks that his heart may end up broken into a thousand pieces but at least he'll know it’s still beating.


End file.
